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Baltimore's "Nobody kill anybody" weekend marred by shooting death

Going into the weekend, Baltimore activist Erricka Bridgeford had a simple hope and request: Nobody kill anybody for 72 hours.

It was too much to ask for in a city on pace to record its highest annual homicide toll, a place still reeling from the racially-charged riots that followed the 2015 death of Freddie Gray at the hands of police.

Some 40 hours into the grassroots ceasefire, a 24-year-old man was fatally shot. Within a few hours, a 37-year-old was also killed by gunshots.

And Baltimore police are once again investigating not one but two homicides.

The victims were taken to the hospital, one by friends, the other one by medics. Both died there.

Before the hoped-for cessation of violence, Bridgeford and other community leaders hit the streets of West Baltimore, urging drug dealers and gang members to put their guns down.

"This is about a culture shift," she said. "It's about helping people realize they have a choice in their decision-making. Not just about committing violence but about feeling hopeless that there's nothing we can do about the level of violence in our communities."

"The measure of success is the fact that we're having this conversation," he said.

"We can't be successful as a city without the citizens being motivated, and that's what this is. People are engaged that might not have been engaged before. We need this to spread like an epidemic."

'Three or four funerals a year'

For Bridgeford, 44, one of six ceasefire organizers, the effort was personal.

"One of my brothers was shot in 2001 and survived," she said. "In 2007, I lost another brother to homicide. Two of my first cousins were murdered. Three of their brothers were murdered. One of my stepsons was murdered. Two weeks ago, somebody that I watched grow up was murdered. I go to three or four funerals a year."

Bridgeford had said organizers raised money to be donated to families of gun violence victims over the weekend.

"If there is any violence," she said, "people are going to immediately rush to those neighborhoods and give people the love and support they need."

Just after 5 p.m. on Saturday, that help was needed.

At a City Hall vigil on Sunday, one planned before Saturday's killings, the names of the homicide victims from this year will be read.

"We don't believe this is a cure for violence," Bridgeford said. "What we do know is that we are showing the world what happens when people all decide together to try to do something."

The Rev. Scott Slater, a Episcopal priest, led a prayer walk Saturday in memory of people who have died from gun violence. The practice started about two years ago, with participants walking two to three miles in certain neighborhoods, stopping where people were gunned down and saying a prayer.

Some walks, he said this week, have included as many as 17 stops.

"There are still a lot of people like me -- a white male who lives in the suburbs -- who don't understand the visceral elements of living in places like West Baltimore," said Slater, who works for the Episcopal Diocese of Maryland and lives just outside the city. "And walking there enables you to feel the visceral despair that you don't feel driving through in a car."

Saturday's killings weren't the only gun violence-incidents. Baltimore police said a victim of a different shooting was wounded and walked into a hospital.

In April, a federal judge approved a consent decree after a Justice Department report uncovered wide racial disparity in how the Baltimore police treat citizens. The federal oversight stemmed from a civil rights investigation launched after the death of Gray, who suffered a fatal injury while in police custody.

The young man's death touched off riots and fueled on ongoing debate over racial bias in policing.

"The last time the world saw Baltimore rise up this way it looked very different," Bridgeford said. "I loved that uprising. It was a blessing. It needed to happen. Pressure literally busts pipes. Now the world is able to see that Baltimore isn't just angry. Baltimore is strong and powerful and we're coming together."

'Nothing to look forward to'

Cassandra Crifasi, deputy director of the Johns Hopkins-Baltimore Collaborative for Violence Reduction, had said even a single day without a shooting would be considered an accomplishment. Two people died during Baltimore's last ceasefire, on Mother's Day weekend.

"We didn't get to this point overnight," she said.

"It didn't happen in one weekend. There were years of frustration being built up -- the drug trade and gangs and issues with civil liberties and policing. All these things sort of erupted with death of Freddie Gray and have been continuing. We're not going to fix it overnight. It's going to take small steps."

"We have a lot of people in this city with nothing to look forward to," said Dwight Watkins, who went from being a squeegee boy and crack dealer to college professor and author of "The Beast Side: Living (and Dying) While Black in America."